by Sam Mariano
Everything freezes again, then goes into overdrive. “You’re hurt?” I demand.
“It’s no biggie. Some rookie fucked up and dropped something on me. I twisted weird to get out of the way. Threw out my back. Can’t really move right now, so probably not going to be a reliable booty call for a few days.”
I don’t really think, I just put the phone down, stand up, and start packing up my laptop.
“Everything okay?” Louise asks, looking at me over her shoulder. “You’re making weird noises over there. You usually only do that when a book is pissing you off.”
“No, not a book. I have to leave.”
She spins around in her chair to look at me. “Leave? Like, the house?”
“Yeah. I mean, I have to go away for a few days. My… the…” I don’t know how to explain Derek, so even though she doesn’t know so much as his name, I pretend she does and assume she’ll go with it. “Derek got hurt at work, and he has a five-year-old. He’s going to need help. You can’t take care of a child if you can’t move.”
Her eyebrows rise in faint surprise. “You’re going to stay with your new boyfriend for a few days?”
“Not my boyfriend,” I say, shooting her a warning look. “We’re basically fuck buddies.”
“Right,” she says, nodding. “Fuck buddies always drop everything they’re doing to take care of one another. That’s like the first rule of being fuck buddies. You’re nailing it. You should write a fuck buddy manual.”
I glance up at her. “You know what? No one asked you.”
Louise smiles. “Aw, you’re blushing. You like this guy. Is this the sociopath you cheated on Henry with? Send me a picture. I have to see what it takes to melt the ice queen.”
“I don’t—” Shaking my head as I zip up my bag, I say, “I don’t have time for this. The point is, I have to go, so can you just lock up when you leave? Also, if I forward you an email, can you take care of it for me? I’m supposed to send out a promo packet for Laura’s new book, but I’m going to lose three hours to driving—”
She’s already nodding. “No sweat, send it on over. Need me to take care of anything else?”
“ARCs need to be sent to the purple ARC team for Stacy’s new book. I was just about to send them out. That won’t take long, but if you could, that would be great. Can you also print me a few coloring pages?”
“Coloring pages? Like, for a kid?”
“Yeah. Superheroes or Cinderella or animals. I know she likes ponies and unicorns. I don’t know how to take care of a kid, so I’m going to give her pictures to color. I’ll have to cook dinner tonight. Children probably need to be kept busy while you cook dinner, or she might touch the stove or something, right?”
Louise cocks a skeptical eyebrow. “You’ve been around this kid before, right?”
“Never mind, just print me a few pictures. I have to go pack some clothes real quick, I might have to stay for a few days.”
“Can you cook?” she calls as I walk down the hall.
I ignore her and go to the bedroom so I can pack a bag.
---
I didn’t tell Derek I was coming. I didn’t text him back after he told me he was hurt, because I was too busy packing and making arrangements. Consequently, it doesn’t hit me until I’m parked in his driveway and walking up to his front door with a bag slung over each shoulder that I probably should have.
I pause at the door, wondering if I should knock. I don’t want Derek to try to come to the door if he’s hurt, but I don’t want to let myself in like I live here, either. I stand here for longer than I should debating, then I pull out my phone. He texted me three more times, probably assuming by my silence that I was pissed off.
I can’t think how to word “I’m on your doorstep” without sounding like I expect a prize for showing up, so I slide the phone back into my purse and knock on the door.
“Hang on,” Derek calls.
“Wait, don’t get up,” I call back. Then I try the knob. It’s open, so I push the door open and let myself inside. “It’s just me.”
“Nikki?” he questions, sounding more than a little shocked.
I close the door behind me and put my bag down gently, heading into the living room. He’s laid up on the couch. I sink to my knees in front of it and smile at him, running my fingers through his hair. “Look at you, trying to break yourself.”
His blue eyes twinkle at me as he says, “Wasn’t me. Damn new guys.”
“Give me his name and address, I’ll go kick him in the face for you.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but he’s twice your size, so I’m not sure how well that would work out.”
“Don’t let my limited height fool you. I do cardio kickboxing to make up for sitting in a chair 80 hours a day. I can kick pretty high.”
“I am very interested in a demonstration,” he tells me.
I smile and lean in to give him a kiss. “Maybe later.”
“I can’t believe you came,” he adds once I pull back.
“Of course I came. If you can’t move, how are you going to take care of Cassidy?”
“But what about work?”
“I brought my laptop and my manuscript. I’ll set it up at the kitchen table. I printed off some coloring pages for Cassidy to keep her busy. It’s a working plan, but I’ll figure it out.” His lips look so kissable and he’s literally wounded right now, so I’m feeling extra tenderness toward him. I bend down to steal another kiss.
As I brush my lips against Derek’s, I hear someone clearing their voice behind me. When I pull back, Derek’s grimace tells me I’m going to be annoyed when I turn around.
Sure enough, when I look over my shoulder, Mike Noble is standing there.
“Oh.” I stand and shift my weight awkwardly.
Mike nods his head, offering a thin attempt at a smile. “Nikki.”
Derek clears his throat, and Mike looks at his son instead of me. “Nikki’s gonna stay, so I won’t need your help after all,” Derek tells his dad.
It makes me feel icky that he called Mike. It shouldn’t since he’s his dad, but ugh, it does. Did he even know we were in touch again? The first time he sees me in over six years, and I’m kneeling on the ground kissing Derek. I want to rewind so his first sight of me is something less vulnerable—something like me glaring him half to death with open hostility.
The discomfort level in the room is at an all-time high, so it’s perfect timing for Cassidy to come crashing in, holding her unicorn in the air.
“Look, Grandpa, she can fly!”
Grandpa. Double yuck. It occurs to me first the first time literally ever, if I procreated with Derek, Mike would be my kid’s grandpa, too. If he and my mom would have worked out… well, I guess that would have been a little weird. Our family has always been weird, so it wouldn’t have been a dealbreaker, but still.
That this dickhead gets to be in Cassidy’s life while my mom will never meet my hypothetical children makes me extra salty, so I can’t help smiling and asking, “How’s the wife?”
“We divorced,” he says.
“How shocking.”
Derek swiftly interrupts. “Thanks for stopping by, Dad.”
With a knowing smile and a faint nod, Mike says, “All right. Come over here and give me a hug,” he tells Cassidy. Then he oomphs as she flies into his body and squeezes him. Before he leaves, he tells Derek to give him a shout if he needs anything and offers me a wordless nod.
“That was fun,” Derek says once he’s gone.
Cassidy already bounded down the hall to her bedroom once Mike left, so I don’t hold back. “I loathe that man.”
“Really? I couldn’t tell,” he says lightly.
“I don’t pretend to like people I hate,” I add.
“I never asked you to,” he assures me. “Come on, shake it off. Come back down here. I’m at an unfair disadvantage today. When I move, it causes so much pain I want to die, so you’re gonna have to work with me here.”
“I have. Still hurts though.” He pouts, just in case I’m still annoyed. I can’t resist kissing his stupid lips, so his evil plan works.
“Have you eaten yet?” I ask him.
“Nope.”
“I guess I’m cooking you dinner then.”
“If you don’t want to cook, we can order take-out. Call Ryan and tell him I’m broken, he’ll probably even deliver it.”
I crack a smile. “You’re gonna milk this so bad, aren’t you?”
“I would convince you that a blow job is the best medicine, but I’m fairly certain an orgasm would cause me immense physical pain.”
“Good thing I like you for more than your body,” I tell him, pushing up off the ground. “What would you like for food?”
“I’m an easy customer. If you make a box of mac and cheese and warm up some chicken tenders in the oven, Cassidy and I will both be fine.”
“That’s not dinner. I’ll make real food. What’s her favorite vegetable?”
Instead of answering me, he calls down the hall, “Cassie, come tell Nikki what your favorite vegetable is.”
Cassidy trudges down the hall, wrinkling her nose up. “I don’t like vegetables. Yuck.”
Derek smirks at me.
I shake my head in refusal. “Nope. That’s not going to work. You need vegetables to make you big and strong.”
“Yuck,” Cassidy says again.
“Supergirl eats her vegetables,” I inform her.
“Well, I don’t,” Cassidy tells me.
“I’ll give you a dollar to eat five bites of broccoli. I’ll make it yummy. I’ll put cheese on it, just like macaroni and cheese. You won’t even think it’s a vegetable, it’ll taste so good.”
Cassidy contemplates this offer. “Big bites or little bites?”
“Big bites,” I stipulate.
“Two dollars,” she counters.
“Cassidy Marie Noble,” Derek says.
I can’t help smiling. “It’s okay, I admire her negotiation skills. Done, two dollars for five big bites. I need to go see what you have in the refrigerator.”
“Spoiler alert: not broccoli,” Derek tells me.
A quick trip to the refrigerator as well as the lengthy grocery list pinned on Derek’s refrigerator door tells me dinner is not going to happen unless I make a grocery run. Since he won’t be able to walk for a few days, he won’t be able to go grocery shopping, so I might as well do it for him. I pluck the list off the fridge and shove it into the shallow pocket of my jeans.
“All right, Cassidy, do you want to go to the store with me, or stay here with your dad?”
“Store, store, store,” she says, running to the door to put her shoes on.
“You’re not ready for this,” Derek tells me.
I walk in and kneel down by the couch again. “Do you need anything before I leave?”
“Hang on, let me grab my wallet.”
As he starts to move, I put a hand on his arm, shaking my head. “For what, the groceries? No, don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not going to let you buy groceries for a house you don’t live in, Nikki,” he tells me.
“I’m staying here for a few days, that means I’m eating here, too. Besides, I made kind of a lot of money on that trilogy you inspired; the least I can do is buy you a bag of groceries. It’s no problem. Do you need me to add anything to the list that was on the fridge?”
“No, but if you’re taking Cassidy, she still sits in a booster seat. Why don’t you take my truck?”
“Why don’t I just take the seat and put it back when we get home,” I offer. “I’ve never driven a truck before. It’s big, I’ll probably hit something.”
He smiles at me. I don’t know why. It makes me suspicious, so I narrow my eyes.
“What?”
He reaches a hand out and runs the back of his hand along my jaw line. “Nothing.”
Cassidy comes in, shoes on, unicorn under her arm. “Can I bring Princess Purple?”
“Sure,” I tell her.
“Can we get popcorn?” she asks.
Lifting his eyebrow, Derek tells Cassidy, “Do not try to con Nikki into buying a bunch of junk. She has a list, and that’s all she’s buying.”
“But I want popcorn,” Cassidy objects.
I barely looked at the list, but I assure her, “Popcorn was on the list.”
She claps, then pumps her fist and says, “Yes!”
Giving Derek’s arm a squeeze, I tell him, “We’ll be back.”
Chapter Twenty One
This is one of those mundane tasks I looked forward to as a lovesick teenage girl whose idiot boyfriend had knocked up someone else. To me, back then, Derek was in need. I fell a little in love with the struggle I knew we would go through, because I knew I’d be good at helping him through it. I knew I could step in and save the day. When he was overwhelmed by Kayla (back before I ever thought they would be together again) and college, and a baby (because Cassidy would be a baby), I would help steady him. I would take care of business, take some of that weight off his shoulders. When we both fell into bed that night, exhausted, his blue eyes would shine with fondness, and he would be so relieved to have me as his partner, taking on life with him.
Of course, all that got washed away when—instead of struggling with me—he took the easy path and got back together with that evil whore.
But now I’m pushing a cart through the cereal aisle with her daughter while she’s God knows where, and Derek does need me, so whatever. Today I get a little taste of the dreams high school Nikki had.
“We need Cheerios,” Cassidy tells me, grabbing a big yellow box off the shelf.
Cheerios are not on the list, but they’re also not a treat, so that seems like a legit add-on.
“All right, I think that about does it,” I tell her. “We have everything on our list.”
“I think we need one more thing,” she informs me.
Given her aversion to vegetables, I make a suggestion. “Have you ever had carrot sticks? They’re a really good snack that kids like. You can dip them in stuff, too. You could dip them in peanut butter or ranch dressing.”
“I like peanut butter,” she tells me.
“Then I bet you’d like carrot sticks dipped in peanut butter. It’s a really yummy snack. I have that myself sometimes. Wanna try it?”
“Sure,” she says, shrugging her small shoulders and leading the way back toward the produce section.
When we get there, I talk her into carrot sticks and celery. The grocer stocked an 8 pack of individual peanut butter cups right next to the dippable produce, so when we head to the register, Cassidy is excited to try her new snacks.
Score.
Since we had so much success in the vegetable department, I say yes to chocolate at the register. I tell her to pick one for her dad for dessert, too, then I grab one for myself.
I like this little burst of domesticity. In fact, I like it so much, it’s not until we’re in the car on the way back to the house that it occurs to me how much work I still have to do today. Usually I don’t balk at doing my work, but today it brings on a small measure of dread.
Given the time crunch and my need to get back to work, though, I did sort of cheat with dinner. I got the stuff to make sides—the vegetable, mashed potatoes, and some dinner rolls—but I bought a rotisserie chicken so the biggest part of dinner would be taken care of.
When we get back to Derek’s house, Cassidy runs in to tell him about our adventures in grocery shopping, while I put everything away and get dinner started. It’s all achingly domestic, the ordinary sort of thing normal people experience all the time, but all new to me. I’ve never done this myself—not growing up, and not since.
I bought stuff to make dinner from scratch tomorrow, though, and I bought enough for Friday, too. I have no
idea how long it will take for Derek to be fully functioning again, but better safe than sorry.
My own words come back to haunt me as I’m standing at the stove, cooking.
I don’t know how to have a healthy relationship.
This all feels… kind of healthy.
I shake it off, reminding myself I’m not in a relationship with Derek. I can’t afford to be in a relationship with him, because I already know how it will feel when everything crumbles. Strange as it is, I have even more to lose now. If I lost Derek again, I wouldn’t just be losing him, I would be losing him and Cassidy. I may not have much time to spend with them, but even when I’m not here, I’m thinking about them. The last thing I would have expected was that the child whose conception drove us apart would be one of the ties binding us years later, but just thinking about it, I can get a feel for how much losing them both would hurt.
It’s not the time to think about all that.
Since Derek can’t come to the table, we bring dinner to him. Cassidy helps me clear off the coffee table and we sit there with our plates while Derek remains on the couch, using his abdomen as a table.
I don’t have to remind Cassidy that she has to take five big bites of broccoli. Once she starts eating and tastes how good it is, she devours her whole portion. Sure, I had to smother it in cheese to get her to eat it, but I’m still calling it a win.
“Next time you tell me you can’t cook, I’m calling bullshit,” Derek informs me.
“It’s more I never have time to cook than I can’t cook,” I admit. “You know I used to cook dinner when I lived with Alex.”
“Who’s Alex?” Cassidy asks, biting into her roll. “Is that your husband?”
I choke in the middle of swallowing a drink of lemonade. “Husband? No. I couldn’t hang out with you and your daddy if I had a husband.”
“Unless I—”
I reach back and cover Derek’s mouth before he can say it. “Don’t you dare.”
His response is muffled from under my hand, but I can still make it out. “I’m just saying.”